Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution (57 page)

Two weeks later, in mid-February of 1795, the National Convention made an official peace treaty with the Chouans. By April most of the Chouan leaders had been found, parleyed with, and received a reward for keeping the peace—Charette, from whom the marquis himself took orders, was given a gratuity of 200,000 livres.

On a mild spring night, the marquis did not make his owl call; he simply knocked, and he had no venison, only a wild white lily in his hand.

“I give this to you, Madame Williams, for all you’ve done in bringing about this peace. For me, it’s a bit like a lily that honors the dead—both the thousands of lives lost, and, selfishly, the loss of my own raison d ’être,” he said. I got up to put the lily in some water.

“Though, you see,” the marquis continued, opening his coat to reveal his sword, and one of his pistols at his belt, “I did not surrender. Part of me thinks we ’re being tricked into joining their Republic.

I’ve sat at endless civilized conferences beneath tents in forests and watched every Chouan leader I have known and respected for years being bought off, as if we were fighting for money.”

“But the Vendéans get back all the property taken from them during the war,” I said. “They have freedom of worship; they are exempt from military service.”

“Though that is not a little ironic,” he said, “as they have lost a third of their population. No, you are right, of course, but it’s still a pacification, not a victory. I did not come to speak of that, though; I bring you a warning. Despite the peace, the Chouans will rally sometime next year to meet a British-backed invasion of the émigré army, which has been waiting in England for years. Have no part of it. I know the man who is behind it. I’m afraid it will end up in disaster.”

“Thank you, Marquis, but I have no intention of helping an invasion.”

“One never knows about the generous heart of Madame Williams, where it might lead her.”

“And what will you do now, friend of the American revolutionaries and of the French royalists?”

“What does a man do, raised in luxury, accustomed to privation and fighting? You do not know my hidden aspiration, Madame. Ever since I saw the grand landscapes of the new world: I shall paint forests and rivers. And where does a man go, who wishes to paint these things?”

“He returns to America?”

“Precisely. He paints rocks and trees and mountains where no beings who call themselves ‘civilized’ exist to spoil the beauty. No Chouans, no Patriot Army, no king, no National Assembly, just a few wild Indians left, plenty of game, and people who like to do things themselves, like me.”

His attitude toward civilization sounded like that of someone else I knew, who lived as far from it as he could, in the wilds of the Lake Country of England.

The spring night entered through the open door, and with it the spirit of adventure. Claudette said, “Good. It sounds like a good place.”

“I think it is,” the marquis said, “especially after the kind of world we ’ve lived in. So, Madame Williams, with our war effectively over, but with who knows what still in store for France, what about going to America with me? You too, Claudette, of course, and Caroline.”

Claudette gasped. I took a petal of the wild lily and held it between my fingers.

“I still have some money from my inheritance, and whenever I get my land back, I will sell that,” he said. “There is nothing left for me here. And you and I have always worked so well together.”

“You flatter me, Marquis, but there are things that still keep me here.”

“Ah. You refer to the mysterious Monsieur William.”

“And a feeling that this is still my region. We have run a lot of risks just to abandon it when we no longer have to fight for it.”

“Enjoy the peace, Madame. This Monsieur William, I believe, is a lucky man. May I ask when he might return?”

“That is up to the war with England, and to fate.”

“Ah, well, I shall not argue with either of those. Madame, you have been the one light in these dark years; may I say my short, and, I’m afraid, unannounced visits here always made up for the months of living like an animal, speaking only to rough men. The small time in your company always reminded me of what I was fighting for, which I regularly forgot, and now I completely forget. To me, you will always be the Fearless Chouanne of Blois,” and he kissed my hand and was at the door in an instant, where he bowed deeply and departed swiftly into the spring night. His lily sat in a wooden cup of water, in the center of the table.

I knew the difference between a good friend and a true love.

Besides, what if the war should suddenly end, and William fly to France, only to find me retired to America with a marquis? There was never any question in my mind.

And the marquis was right, as usual. The invasion came in June, and it was a disaster. Almost a thousand Chouans made it to the beaches to greet the great French émigré army, but it was only about three thousand strong, and the British unloaded supplies, but none of King George’s Redcoats. Four thousand men is not enough for an invasion force. General Hoche of the Republican Army efficiently cut them off on the peninsula, and all the Chouans were either killed in battle or executed afterward. I was glad the marquis was painting American mountains.

With the permission of the count, I had reopened the hunting lodge and, off and on, continued for the next ten years to hide deserters from the glorious army, or draft evaders, or refractory priests, or anyone who was hunted for voicing dissent.

I also used a cave a few miles to the west of town, where the first inhabitants of the Loire Valley had lived, thousands and thousands of years ago. At a time when I judged it safe to take La Rouge out, as dusk turned into evening, the sinking sun had shone on a shadowy opening in the white tufa chalk cliffs along the river. I dismounted and peeked into what seemed a small room. I came back the next evening with Jean and candles, and we explored two more rooms that opened from that first one. In the farthest one our light shone high on the cave wall, on the heads of five deer or “wapiti,” as the marquis would call them, with grand antlers, alert black eyes, ears forward, and noses almost twitching at us. Who knows how long ago people, not that different from us, drew those figures up there, and what they were thinking? I imagined them—or him—in the flickering torchlight, carefully working.

Whatever they were thinking, it wouldn’t have been that thousands of years later a woman finds the perfect place to grow mushrooms and to hide more refugees. No one at market knew how I produced so many and such fine mushrooms. The refugees slept or read or wrote by candlelight right there among burgeoning mushrooms and ancient watching wapiti. I had been looking for some other place to use besides the lodge. The cave dwellers had provided me with a prudent alternative.

After what came to be called the Reign of Terror, the time of the Directory ensued, when a group of men “directed” France in a most disorganized way. The
assignat
, the already worthless paper currency of the Revolution, had become even more worthless. To help bolster their nation, bankrupt through expansionist policies abroad and poor management at home, the Directory reinstated old taxes that the kings had used only in the worst of times: on doors, windows, all goods coming into towns. They also decided to confiscate émigrés’

lands more vigorously, again persecuting priests, any émigrés who tried to return, and even their families. Thus the need for the cave.

We all know what arose out of this chaos—that artillery corporal whose first famous act as a general was to turn cannons on royalist demonstrators in Paris. Now he began winning victory after victory abroad. I thought that we would truly have perpetual war, as long as Bonaparte kept winning and the old empires kept creating useless coalitions to oppose him. It all seemed a wicked joke made up by the masters of empires to keep themselves in business.

It also seemed hopeless ever to see William again, or even receive any letters from him. I imagined him climbing the mountains of his youth, composing poems on their windy crags. I continued my own translation of the huge
Romance of the Rose
into a prose story. That was my perpetual project, which I set against the unceasing wars.

That and the raising of the beautiful and gentle Caroline, who helped make goat cheese and sell it with us at market in little
crémets,
and whom I taught to ride on the grounds of the château de Beauregard.

The count was now able to keep his château by being a caretaker for it, while Napoleon granted it periodically to different top marshals, so they, in turn, could grant it to their wives or mistresses. So sometimes when I visited the count I would see plumed hussars riding up to the château, or the carriage of a marshal of the Grande Armée stopping outside, but usually it was just a grand lady in a chiffon gown, with several other chiffon- or taffeta-gowned ladies following her, all floating, laughing and talking, through the salons, and I entering the side door in my riding habit and a hat ten years out of mode.

Marshal Ney, in his shining top boots, once complimented me on La Rouge. Although I was nervous at first that he would want to confiscate her, I soon saw that this man, who led thousands of cavalry in battle, appreciated a good horse when he saw one. He was very polite.

What need had he of another horse?

The count kept to his own corner of his château—to his salon and to his library, with his coat of arms. He dined in his library. The exquisite Edouard acted as if that were always the most fitting and proper place to serve a dinner.

One cold February afternoon I saw Angelique coming toward our cottage. She must have walked all the way from chez Vergez across the river. And Angelique never
walked
anywhere. She rode in the family carriage, or occasionally on horseback. I met her in the barnyard with her hood down and the wind whipping her long blonde hair and her eyes glistening with tears. She looked a vision of the saddest beauty I still have ever seen. She stood before me and simply said, with utter finality, “Philippe’s dead. They killed him somewhere in Italy. A place called Rivoli. Where’s that? Who cares about Rivoli? Do you care about Rivoli, Annette? Did Philippe die to protect you, or me? It’s all a lie. Well, you know it’s a lie. I don’t have to tell
you
.”

I wanted to embrace her, but she, I could tell, would rather stand there, with chickens running stupidly about her feet, and a goat looking interested in her glove, and her hair being blown about by the cold wind. She wasn’t seeing anything but a cold, raging anger. I knew that anger. One had to do something with that anger. I waited.

“Annette,” she said, “I want you to let me help at the lodge again. I know you’re still doing it. Don’t say you’re not. I know you were the Blonde Chouanne. I’m not stupid. And I’m not a coward. I just never cared before. I’m sorry. Even after Etienne. I thought all this would go away. Now it’s just getting worse. There’s no end. So I want you to let me help. I want to help hide people, or pass them on to others, or whatever you do. I can keep quiet. I can be discreet. I just want to do something against the wars. Something small. Something a girl with a short memory who can’t ride very well can do. I must do something, Annette.” And then she cried, and I held her.

I later enlisted her in the Chouans, and she was very efficient at the lodge and at the cave. She was good for morale.

That evening I rode out to the château to console the count. I met him in the library. He was standing on a high ladder, taking down his coat of arms from its place by the coffered ceiling. He didn’t greet me. He just said, “Annette, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve got to hand this thing down to someone. Can you please help me?”

I climbed up the ladder behind him, and he passed me the gilt frame that held in it the faded azure background and the three round gold bells. As he did so, the bells rang dully, like the sound of cows grazing in a distant meadow. “Careful,” he said. “It’s heavy.” I held it carefully and handed the coat of arms back to him at the bottom of the ladder.

“Edouard wouldn’t help me,” the count said. “Something about the pride of the family, for which he has been in service all his adult life. But what’s the point, I ask you? What’s the point of keeping it up there? It’s the first time Edouard’s ever refused a request of mine,” he added.

“It’s the first time he’s ever received such a request,” I said. I touched one of the bright brass bells. “I’ll wager Edouard has polished these many times,” I said. “I’ve always wondered what these bells mean.” The count took his coat of arms now and gently placed it on the rosewood table. Then he pulled back a wood panel in the wall, carved with a bell, and unlocked a closet hidden behind the panel.

“They’re carved in the woodwork,” I said. “They’re everywhere. They must mean something.” The count unfolded a strip of white linen from the edge of the table and placed it over the face of the coat of arms. He carried the coat of arms to the closet and laid it on a broad empty shelf.

“They may have meant something once, my dear,” he said. “They may have even rung clearly once, to call the counts to the hunt. Perhaps old Thibaut the Cheat knew what they meant. He was the first count of Beauregard, in the year of our Lord 940. But I’ve never known.

Philippe never cared. He even called them ‘Thibaut’s balls.’ So I’m putting them away, in his honor.” He checked one time to see if the linen was on right and closed and locked the closet and pulled the wood panel shut. No future generation would want that coat of arms.

I had dinner with the count in the library. We talked about Angelique and about his crops. “I’m very glad you’ve come,” he said at the end. “You know in the notice to me they called Philippe’s death a ’sacrifice’ for
la patrie
. Those taffeta-covered bitches out there,” he said, “in my château; their lovers made a
sacrifice
out of my son. What kind of sacrifice is that? He was the only one I had.” And I embraced him finally, and he held on to me long.

The next time I saw him, while the ladies floated by in the hall, he was planting geraniums in the window box of the library.